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Home Cloisters, Rule of Benedict, Disrupted Schedules, Wendell Berry, & St Joseph the Hymnographer

by Erin Doom

Feast of St Joseph the Hymnographer
Anno Domini 2020, April 3

The Rule of St Benedict from the Abbey of Meten, A.D. 1414

1. Essays & Reflections: Continuing yesterday’s patristic emphasis on the remembrance of death, St. Benedict gives the same admonition: “Keep death daily before your eyes.” The Very Rev. Dom Benedict Nivakoff, Prior of the Monastery of St. Benedict in Monte (perched above the ancient town of Nursia, birthplace of St. Benedict), elaborates on this passage from the fourth chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict:

we are reminded that God is the ultimate master of our lives, even if His presence is not always evident. In a fatherly way, St. Benedict also calls us to weep for our sins in fear of the coming Judgment. The reality of death and judgment reminds us to trust in the mercy and justice of God alone, whereas being forgetful of death can lead us to rely on ourselves and the world’s solutions to our problems.

Later in the same blog post, Fr. Nivakoff suggests that the coronavirus-imposed cloistering in homes may be God’s way of “offering us a chance to rediscover mystery – the mystery of the Mass’s unseen efficacy (2 Cor. 4:18). We must rely on an invisible medicine for our ultimate salvation in the face of this invisible threat.” Read the whole post here.

2. Essays & Reflections: Dwight Longenecker proposes yet another “Option” to Dreher’s Benedict Option: the Lockdown Option, which monks and nuns have been practicing for centuries and now we have all been forced to join them. Longenecker offers three lessons from the three vows of Benedictine monasticism for these dark times:

Stability: This means staying in one place, which “should force us to slow down and reduce the frenetic pace of our over busy lives.”
Obedience: He notes that the root of the word obedience is to listen (from Latin obedire). “Perhaps in lockdown mode we can all take more time to listen attentively not to another podcast, audio book, or whatever is streaming on our screen gadgets, but learn to listen to the voice of the Lord.”
Conversion of Life: “The coronavirus crisis could awaken all of us and be the tipping point of a major reversal in the world’s moral and spiritual decadence.”

Read the whole piece here.

3. Essays & Reflections: Related to the theme of slowing down, Wendell Berry wrote a piece back in 1977 for Organic Gardening and Farming titled “Life On (and Off) Schedule.” It’s an interesting (and hard-to-find) reflection on the value of getting off schedule, based on a trip he and his wife Tanya made to San Francisco for some errands and then on to San Juan Ridge to visit their friend Gary Snyder. Read the whole thing here.

4. Today’s Eighth Day Books review is on a novel that tells the life of a woman who bore the weight of the land, of war, and of the living and the dead. It's a story of love and hope, a novel for these coronavirus times. Read the review of Hannah Coulter here.

5. Poetry: How about one titled “Stay Home” by Wendell Berry!

I will wait here in the fields

to see how well the rain

brings on the grass.

In the labor of the fields

longer than a man’s life

I am at home. Don’t come with me.

You stay home too.

I will be standing in the woods

where the old trees move only with the wind

and then with gravity.

In the stillness of the trees

I am at home. Don’t come with me.

You stay home too.

6. Bible: Is. 45:11-17, Gen. 22:1-18, Prov. 17:17-18:5. Online here.

7. Liturgy: Today is the feast of St Joseph the Hymnographer. For a couple of his stunning hymns, one for Vespers of the Thursday of the Great Canon (last evening) and the other for Matins of the Saturday of the Akathist Hymn (tomorrow), click here.

8. Today’s Word from the Fathers comes from St. Benedict through a piece written by my friend Brandon Buerge back in 2015. He encapsulates each chapter from the Rule of St Benedict into a one-sentence summary with application to a modern audience of non-monastic vocation. It’s wonderful and brilliant. Read it here.

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